Bernard Madoff appeals jailing after guilty plea

14 March 2009 — 9:19am

Lawyers for Bernard , who is being held in a high-security prison in Manhattan, asked a federal appeals court to free the convicted money manager until he’s sentenced in June.

Ira Sorkin, one of ’s lawyers, filed an appeal today with the US Court of Appeals in New York, according to a court clerk. The legal brief comes a day after a lower court judge ordered jailed after he pleaded guilty to masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

Scott Sussman, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, where is being held, declined to provide details on where inmate number 61727-054 is being held at the facility, which also houses accused drug dealers, mobsters and terrorists.

Upon arrival, inmates are usually given a medical, psychological and social screening and assigned to a unit that’s consistent with their security status, Sussman said in an interview. Usually that’s in the general population, he said. Inmates are placed on suicide watch only if prison officials deem it necessary, he said. They are assigned to two-man cells, he said.

, 70, faces a prison term of as long as 150 years when he’s sentenced on June 16. He entered his guilty plea yesterday in Manhattan federal court, three months after confessing to his sons that his firm, Bernard L. Investment Securities, was "one big lie". U.S. District Judge Denny Chin ordered the jailing of , who had been free on $10 million bond.

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"I operated a Ponzi scheme through the investment advisory side of my business," told Chin at yesterday’s hearing in a courtroom packed with victims and members of the media. Speaking for the first time since his arrest on December 11, he said he was "deeply sorry" and knew what he did was criminal.

’s chances of winning his freedom from the appeals court range from "slim to none," George Jackson, a former federal prosecutor now at the Bryan Cave law firm in Chicago, said in an interview yesterday.

"The law requires the judge shall incarcerate following conviction unless there’s clear or convincing evidence that he’s not a flight risk or a danger to the community," Jackson said.

Chin said yesterday that may flee.

"As Mr has pled guilty, he is no longer entitled to the presumption of innocence," Chin said as he revoked the money manager’s bail. "The exposure is great, 150 years in prison. In light of Mr ’s age, he has an incentive to flee, he has the means to flee and thus he presents a risk of flight."

In an interview, Sorkin declined to say where was being held at MCC, as the prison is known. He said that the money manager’s freedom now rests with the judges of the appeals court.